* * *

I've been dying a little at a time ever since you left.

Every time I tried to call you and forgot no one was there to answer.  Every time I walked into your office and found Jonas sitting there instead.  Every time someone said your name.  Every time someone didn’t say your name.

It wasn’t always unbearable.  But every day I would go to bed, and a little more of my heart would be missing.  And when I woke up and had to remember all over again, I left a few drops of blood on the pillowcase.  Just a few.

But it was enough, over 376 days.  It accumulated.  It wasn’t until after the mission to PR9827, when I looked at your locker with someone else’s name on it and I felt nothing that I realized.  It was all gone.  Everything.  I didn’t have anything else left to give.  To give you.

I know that you’d be angry with me.  For giving up, for giving in.  But that’s really not what happened.  I didn’t plan on this, you see.  But my grip on life has been less strong since you’ve been gone and pieces started slipping through the cracks.

It was you that always helped me pick up the pieces.  When I tried to do it alone I just kept cutting myself on the edges.

So I didn’t really kill myself, Daniel.  I didn’t.  Because I was already dead.

* * *

fin